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Asylum Stories
Further to the recent correspondence about women in asylums in the Victorian era, this was the topic of my dissertation when I studied for an MA in history as a mature student (2006–2009). I started with the premise that women had been interred in these lunatic asylums based on the widespread misogyny around unmarried mothers, unwanted wives and troublesome daughters. I spent hours in the Liverpool archives reading the case notes of inpatients at Rainhill Lunatic Asylum between 1851 and 1901.
What I found was detailed histories of each patient plus many ‘before’ and ‘after’ photos where the women (and some very young teenagers) looked terrified and unkempt in the first, and very placid and posed when they were sent back into society. I thought I would find that many female patients would be in the institution for life (forgotten by their families), but this is not the case. Most of the female patients had a good chance of being ‘cured’ and their stay in Rainhill was only a temporary one (although for some they were patients several times).
Young girls going through puberty, women having recently given birth, and women around the age of the menopause made up the majority of patients and were the most likely to be released after a relatively short stay. It would seem that for these women their mental health was very closely related to their biology. I didn’t find a lot of evidence of unmarried mothers being admitted on those grounds.
As for the male patients, many of them had served in the Army, Royal Navy or Merchant Navy. They had been through experiences that had scarred them for life. Many had become alcoholics and were in very poor physical health as well. A large percentage were never released and died in Rainhill. We would now recognise that these poor souls had post-traumatic stress disorder, for which there was no treatment. In fact, it would only be after the experiences servicemen had in the First World War that this disorder was first diagnosed. At least there was some hope for most of the asylum’s female patients.
Katharine McKinnon, by email
EDITOR REPLIES Thank you for sharing your discoveries with us Katharine. It’s heartening to know that so many female patients were only there temporarily.
PRISONERS IN PARADISE
